He ain't Heavy, He's my Brother

Captain's blog - May 17th, 2008...

It appears after much anguish, the device known as the Vodafone 3G, modem; seems to be showing signs of life and is cooperating..

After being disappointed with losing yesterdays blog post, I welcomed going to Asoka and "chillaxing" in the company of my friends. Asoka is one of my favourite night spots and is always filled with Cape Town's trendy, beautiful people. The barmen there are well trained and the famous cocktails and lesser-known food are always of the highest quality. What makes the place really special, however is the tree that is found rooted in the middle of the establishment; according to my brother, Joe, is one of the oldest Olive trees in Cape Town.

As mentioned, in yesterdays backup entry; my brother and I were there for yet another farewell. This time for our Belgium friend, Natalie, who is on her way to Crete in Greece. It seems that two things become evident when winter crawls in on little cat feet: One is the rain, which it's been doing consistently, for close to two weeks (although today it is a particularly unusual, sunny winter day) and two, the mass exodus of foreign and local folk. It always amazes me how many cool people you meet in Cape Town, during the Summer months, but come Winter, they are off again to warmer, and more temperate climates. I spoke to one such cool person this morning, Josephine (not to be confused with Joseph, my brother) whom I met last summer and miss very much.

Anyways back to Asoka last night, it surprises me how many people still confuse me and my brother. Even last night, the guests at Natalie's farewell, were shocked when they finally realized that all this time, there wasn't one, but two of us! We kept getting questions about whether or not we are twins, because apparently, we look really similar...just for the record we're not twins...he's the older, at close to 3 years my senior. When I first moved to Cape Town, the twin thing annoyed us to no end; so much so, that one day out of frustration we decided to play along. But, we tried to confuse them in the process.

We came up with this story: that we were in actual fact twins, but because we were conceived on a leap year; Joe's birthday was on the 28th and mine on the 29th of February, he was actually 28 and me 7...I had no idea that people could be so gullible. However with the addition of some attention from the fairer sex, owing to our similarities - we're starting to come to terms with it.

Has anyone else noticed those tiny, shiny rotating pyramids on top of buildings? Particularly predominant in the Claremont, Newlands business district. A few of my old colleagues and I have always wondered what they were...but I've never been able to find out because it seemed that no one knew the answer...Until this morning that is, while driving home from the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill, I spotted one and my curiosity resurfaced; so I asked my brother what it was and he told me that they were designed by some guy in Cape Town, to scare off pigeons.

The olive tree at Asoka, the pigeon pyramid... you might be noticing an emerging pattern. While Joe, may not be great at remembering names or faces, and has asked me to use my blog as a public medium for apology. He does tend to have the uncanny ability to remember and dispense some, really useless facts...